Album Review: Map of the Soul: 7 | BTS

This is Album #8/20 that I listened to for my 2020 challenge. I listened to this album 8 times for my review.

Here are some quick stats about Map of the Soul: 7 by BTS:

• Album #7

• Released February 21, 2020 (Last album release 2018)

• Album length: 74:52, 19 tracks

• Peaked at #1 on US Billboard 200 (2 weeks on the charts so far)

• Genre: K-pop

• Metacritic score: 82/100

I liked this album. I think I'm an ARMY now. But I think I mostly love the group for their dancing and personalities. The music is okay, it's just not quite as good as I want it to be. I think they deserve better music to perform, because they are so great. But it could just be my taste. I'm not usually into rap at all.

Here's a breakdown of the track listing:

1. Intro: Persona

2. Boy with Luv (feat. Halsey)**

3. Make It Right*

4. Jamais Vu*

5. Dionysus

6. Interlude: Shadow

7. Black Swan

8. Filter

9. My Time

10. Louder Than Bombs

11. ON*

12. Ugh!

13. 00:00 (Zero O'Clock)*

14. Inner Child*

15. Friends

16. Moon

17. Respect

18. We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal

19. Outro: Ego

20. On (feat. Sia)

(Bold- dislike, *- like)

This album was a little hard for me to get into at first. I think this was for a few reasons including that most of the lyrics aren't in English, there's a lot of rap elements in the songs and also the album is very long. All of these together made the album a little intimidating for me.

I like that the album is a mix of songs performed by all of them, there are some solo songs and some that are performed by only 2-4 of them. It makes it interesting. The rap songs grew on me by the end, but my favorites were still the pop songs and slow ballads. I know I am so late to this trend but I LOVE BOY WITH LUV. And I love the music video so much too. That one I am definitely going to continue listening to for forever. Another good thing about this album is that there were no bad songs.

RM is listed as a writer on most of the songs. J-Hope is also a writer for a lot of the songs. The other boys are writers for various songs on the album. But the boys are listed as writers along with 2-10 other writers per song. As usual, I have to say that when there are that many writers, I don't usually give the main artist much credit for the songwriting.

I have slowly been going through their past music videos. As I said earlier, I am more interested when I get to see them dance as well. I will probably eventually go back and listen to some of their previous albums. I will definitely be looking out for their future albums and music videos. I would rate this a 6/10.

Have you listened to this album? Let me know your thoughts down below!